As the head of climate at SecondMuse and the CEO of the American Manufacturing Futures Institute, Lara Croushore and Stacey Weismiller are at the forefront of redefining how America builds its future. They view manufacturing not merely as an economic sector, but as the foundational civic infrastructure that sustains the social and fiscal health of entire regions. From the reactivation of the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the emergence of the “Battery Belt” in the Great Lakes, their work focuses on aligning industrial heritage with the urgent demands of the clean energy transition.
The following discussion explores the vital role of climate manufacturing ecosystems in stabilizing local tax bases, the logistical hurdles of scaling hardware startups, and the strategies needed to transform legacy industrial corridors into modern engines of innovation.
Manufacturing functions as civic infrastructure by supporting tax bases and public services. How do you quantify the stabilizing effect of these careers on local neighborhoods, and what specific fiscal risks do communities face when their industrial capacity begins to decline? Please share examples of the long-term impact on schools.
Manufacturing is as foundational to a city as its streets, sewers, and schools because it creates durable, skills-based careers that keep families and neighborhoods stable. When we look at the numbers, the shift is stark; U.S. manufacturing jobs have fallen from about 20 million to roughly 13 million, and that loss ripples through the entire civic fabric. When a factory closes, the tax base evaporates, directly weakening a city’s ability to fund essential public services like education and emergency response. In industrial regions, the decline often leads to a “brain drain” where the most talented young people leave, further eroding the social capital needed to maintain high-quality schools. Without a robust local industry to provide high-paying jobs, the funding for local school districts becomes precarious, leading to reduced programs and a lack of investment in the next generation of workers.
Programs like Scale For ClimateTech have helped hardware companies raise over $1 billion. What are the logistical steps to move a startup from a prototype to mid-scale production, and how do flexible debt products accelerate this timeline? Please elaborate on the specific equipment and working capital needs involved.
Moving a climate tech startup from a lab prototype to mid-scale production requires a massive infusion of capital and a “living lab” environment where innovation meets industrial reality. The logistical steps involve securing specialized facilities—like the millions of square feet of reactivated space at the Brooklyn Navy Yard—and investing in advanced manufacturing equipment for batteries or grid components. Flexible debt products are crucial because they allow firms to scale on real-world timelines rather than the often unrealistic expectations of venture capital. These products provide the necessary working capital to purchase raw materials and hire skilled technicians before the first products even roll off the line. By streamlining reporting and offering faster disbursements, these financial tools ensure that hardware firms don’t stall during the critical transition to commercial manufacturing.
Clean energy jobs in some industrial regions are growing at 1.5 times the state average by leveraging legacy assets. How can cities with deep industrial histories retool their workforces for advanced materials or grid components? What specific steps ensure that historical industrial knowledge is transferred to younger workers?
Cities like Pittsburgh are proving that a legacy of heavy industry is actually a launchpad for the clean energy economy, with clean energy jobs growing at 1.5 times the Pennsylvania state average. Retooling the workforce involves connecting deep industrial know-how with modern academic excellence, such as the robotics programs at Carnegie Mellon. To ensure knowledge transfer, we need to create inclusive networks and apprenticeship models where veteran workers—the masters of the “how”—train younger workers in the “what” of advanced materials and semiconductors. This involves formalizing manufacturing curriculum and creating supply-chain matchmaking programs that bridge the gap between traditional employers like Westinghouse or Siemens and new startups. By treating the industrial floor as a classroom, we preserve decades of technical expertise while applying it to the technologies of the future.
In cities like Los Angeles, scarce land and real estate speculation often displace industrial space. What are the core components of a “Climate Manufacturing Compact” that protects these corridors, and how can port electrification serve as an anchor for growth? Please detail the metrics used to measure production space.
A “Climate Manufacturing Compact” in a city like Los Angeles is essential to prevent speculative real estate markets from turning vital production zones into luxury condos. The core components include a unified commitment from the city, county, labor unions, and utilities to protect industrial corridors and streamline the adaptive reuse of existing buildings. Port electrification serves as a massive anchor for growth because it creates immediate demand for localized clean tech hardware and provides a stable, long-term project for the regional workforce. To hold stakeholders accountable, we must use specific metrics such as the preservation of total industrial square footage, the number of quality jobs created per acre, and measurable targets for emissions reductions within these corridors. By prioritizing “zero industrial square footage loss,” cities can ensure that their $1 trillion regional economies remain productive hubs rather than just service centers.
The Great Lakes region is emerging as a “Battery Belt,” yet state-versus-state competition often fragments the market. What specific metrics should be included in a unified regional playbook, and how can a cohesive strategy prevent bidding wars? Please explain the importance of shared domestic content standards.
The Great Lakes corridor, stretching from Chicago to Buffalo, has the potential to be a global leader in electric vehicles and semiconductors, but “bidding wars” between states like Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana can lead to fragmented progress. A unified regional playbook should move away from zero-sum competition and instead adopt shared metrics for job creation, carbon footprint reduction, and domestic content percentages. By establishing common domestic content standards, the region ensures that the supply chain remains localized, preventing a situation where states compete for the final assembly while the high-value components are sourced elsewhere. This cohesive strategy allows the region to present itself as a single, massive manufacturing economy that can compete on the global stage for $90 billion-plus investments in data centers and energy infrastructure.
Creating a national “Manufacturing Commons” requires modernizing utilities, ports, and rail lines. What are the primary obstacles to making incentives interoperable across different state borders, and how do multi-tenant production spaces help hardware firms scale? Please describe the role of public-private project financing in this process.
The primary obstacle to a “Manufacturing Commons” is the lack of interoperability; a tax credit in one state often doesn’t recognize the supply chain contributions of a neighboring state, creating artificial barriers for growing companies. Multi-tenant production spaces, such as those found at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, help hardware firms scale by providing shared access to expensive utilities, specialized loading docks, and rail lines that a single startup could never afford alone. Public-private project financing is the glue that holds these spaces together, as it blends philanthropic and public capital with private investment to derisk the construction of these complex facilities. When utilities and transportation infrastructure are modernized to serve multiple tenants, it lowers the “cost of entry” for innovators, allowing them to focus their limited capital on research and development rather than overhead.
What is your forecast for the growth of regional manufacturing hubs in the United States over the next decade?
Over the next decade, I forecast a significant shift away from centralized manufacturing toward a highly connected network of regional hubs that define the “Climate Manufacturing Commons.” We will see the maturation of the Great Lakes “Battery Belt” and the transformation of coastal cities into hubs for maritime electrification and resilient urban infrastructure. As more regions adopt the model of treating manufacturing as civic infrastructure, we will see a reversal of the decades-long decline in industrial jobs, with growth concentrated in advanced materials, grid storage, and clean energy components. This growth will be driven by a more sophisticated alignment of public policy and private capital, turning what was once a fragmented landscape into a resilient, national engine of industrial renewal.
